Why did the Colonials thrive and the Mantelopes die out, despite, as most viewers point out, the Colonials being in an objectively worse position? Well, a few reasons;
The Mantelopes spent millions of years dependent on the Qu for survival, with their lack of survival skills being made up for. Without the Qu, the Mantelopes were forced to devolve to accommodate the sudden change in lifestyle, like a domesticated dog being forced to essentially go feral when it’s abandoned for too long.
The Colonials, despite being in a more horrible situation, essentially were too efficient to die out, much in the same way how it’s hard to completely kill an entire population of bacteria. It basically left them no choice but to adapt and evolve.
At a glance, the Gravitals and the Asteromorphs seem evenly matched, so why did the Asteromorphs come out on top at the end of the war? A few possible reasons:
While the Gravitals have very advanced technology, the Asteromorphs are by far the oldest subspecies of humanity, being directly descended from humans that escaped the Qu. The Ruin Haunters (The Gravitals' earliest form) were essentially repurposing Qu technology, while the Asteromorphs were expanding what amazing technology they already had.
The Gravitals were already on the brink of a civil war between an old-fashioned party that bought into their history of xenophobia, and a newer party that wanted to reject it. It's unlikely that the conflict disappeared just because they were at battle with another species. The Gravitals' downfall could have very well been due to infighting.
To expand on this, the Gravitals' xenophobia probably didn't help them very much in the end. In traditional wars, defectors from one side often leave because they find that the other side aligns better with their ideals, needs or desires. The Gravitals' end goal is the utter annihilation of the Asteromorphs and the continued enslavement of the Subjects, whereas the Asteromorphs' mostly just want to stop the conflict, which gives most of the surviving species (The Asteromorphs, the Subjects, and the more liberal Gravitals) higher incentive to defect or betray the Gravitals.
Its also likely that the New Machines are directly descended from Gravitals that sided with the Asteromorphs.
There is also the fact that the species the Gravitals killed were all terrestrial and dependent on their home planets for survival, so the Gravitals merely had to destroy their planet or stop it from cultivating life (like blocking out their suns). The Asteromorphs are not dependent on a single planet and can move around freely, which means the Gravitals likely had to come up with new ways to fight an enemy they didn't understand all that much.
Also, while Fantastic Racism may motivate a Gravital to fight against the Asteromorphs, it is deeply unhelpful when it comes to understanding another species, because racism in general tends to cloud judgement and prevent empathy towards the hated party, and, as the millennia wore on, that hatred would only become more blinding and single-minded. That paired with the Gravitals intense xenophobia of any organic life likely means that, the more racist a Gravital was, the less open it would be to fully understand their enemy.
Of the posthuman species that went extinct before achieving sapience, the Titans and the Temptors are singled out as having been particularly promising before being tragically wiped out. At the end of the book, we finally get a good look at the author◊, an alien who is radically different-looking from most of the book's human-descended species - but superficially resembles a female Temptor, with the addition of a single tentacle-like limb attached to a mouth-like orifice, much like the lower lip-derived trunk of a Titan. So were those species truly the most promising of the extinct post-humans? Or are the author's subtle biases regarding what a sapient species "should" look like showing through?
With how genetic engineering works (typically only being viable for affecting an organism's offspring), the Qu, to transform humanity, would have had to use the last generations of Star People to create the posthuman animals. Now, it's possible that the posthumans were created in Qu laboratories artificially, but considering how cruel the Qu are, this seems unlikely. It's more likely that the Star People were forced to gestate and give birth to the deformed creatures that succeeded them. And after that, the Qu's humiliation being complete, they dealt with their worthless Star People stock.
Given that the Qu subjugated humanity for forty million years, its possible that when they created posthumans with comparatively "normal" anatomy for a tetrapod, like the Predators or the Mantelopes, they genetically engineered them the old-fashioned way - That is, by breeding humans with traits they wanted to preserve or exaggerate, and culling ones with traits they wanted to reduce or eliminate, generation after generation for millions of years. Imagine being born with a harmful genetic mutation and growing up knowing that the Qu will force you to have as many offspring as possible because they want your descendants to suffer.
It’s made quite clear that the Colonials, for millions of generations, were forced to endure the suffering of not just themselves, but their loved ones, every day for 40 million years. Many Colonials lived and died, spending their entire lives eating shit and writhing as a blob on the ground, without knowing the paradise that the Modular People would eventually create.
Imagine being one of the Star People who’d managed to fight back against the Qu or tried to hide underground. You are fully aware that most of humanity is either dead or transformed beyond recognition, possibly including your loved ones, and that when the Qu find you you’ll suffer the same fate. Now imagine your hiding spot is unearthed, and you’re face to face with a Qu.
The book specified that the Star People found a dinosaur skeleton on an alien planet that’s exactly like the ones on Earth, and they took it as a sign that a potentially dangerous alien could have brought them there. While it’s never clarified word for word, it’s implied that the Qu were the ones to do so. Is it possible that dinosaurs are merely perversions of a species that was once like humanity before they met the Qu, and they were also changed beyond recognition?
The Amphicephali are also an entirely alien species that is described as having a evolutionary history that’s just as complex as humanity’s. Is it possible that the reason the Qu abandoned humanity and had an insanely long and unexplained absence while humanity regained its sentience, is because they were busy mutilating the Amphicephali’s ancestors?
The book tends to narrate in a detached way, similiar to a textbook, and describes the countless wars and genocides in only a few paragraphs at most, with many of the specifics being quite vague. It takes a while to sink in, but a lot of the story's conflicts take place over millions of years.
◊, an alien who is radically different-looking from most of the book's human-descended species - but superficially resembles a female Temptor, with the addition of a single tentacle-like limb attached to a mouth-like orifice, much like the lower lip-derived trunk of a Titan. So were those species truly the most promising of the extinct post-humans? Or are the author's subtle biases regarding what a sapient species "should" look like showing through?
